


condemnant quod non intellegunt

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Series: ubi amor, ibi dolor [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Depression, Discovery of Self-Harm, Discussion of Cutting, Discussion of Excessive Exercise, Drowning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season 1, Self-Drowning, Self-Harm, discussion of suicide, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 11:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9723677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: Set in a slightly canon-divergent S1. The five times Oliver is caught self-harming and the one time he isn’t.3: Laurel Lance





	

**Author's Note:**

> "condemnant quod non intellegunt" - they condemn what they do not understand.
> 
> Part 3 of the fic. It was meant to be Laurel focused, but Tommy ended up there as well.

With his two coping techniques of cutting and excessive exercise taken away from him by his family and his best friend, there was nothing to distract Oliver from the painful memories and horrific flashbacks that plagued him on a daily basis.

His PTSD was getting worse. He was sinking into depression, and his anxiety wasn’t making things better. The constant media presence wasn’t helping; Moira and Walter were encouraging him to take a job at QC, thinking that it would help re-introduce a sense of normalcy into his life, that giving him a fixed schedule would help him cope. But Oliver didn’t want a fixed schedule. At ARGUS, a fixed schedule had been all he’d known for half a year. Eat, train, mission, eat, sleep, repeat. And since he hadn’t exactly been sleeping lately due to the night terrors, it was just action, action, action, with no peace.

The Queens and Tommy always seemed to come up with an idea to occupy the archer’s time, just when he was about to get a short period of alone time. Going out for, or accompanying to the office, or watching a movie. Perhaps it was because they thought that if Oliver were given some alone time, he would slip back into old habits. Oliver knew that they were just trying to help, stop him from hurting himself, but did they not understand that _not_ being able to hurt himself physically was just hurting him a _lot more_ mentally?

He wanted to hurt himself. Wanted to feel the pain, so that the crippling fear and anxiety would go away, at least for a minute or two. Oliver wanted - no, _needed_ , to self-harm. But with his family and best friend suffocating him, he wasn’t able to, and that was causing him a lot more mental trouble that he’d care to admit.

Oliver needed to find another way. He needed to find another method to cause himself pain, without his family or Tommy discovering him. The idea cropped up one night after he’d managed to calm himself down when he awoke screaming from his latest nightmare, his whole body shaking. He’d sprinted to the bathroom and ran cold water over his head in the sink in order to try and ground himself. When the idea came, he promised himself that he would hold back, that he wouldn’t do it unless he truly had to, when a day arrived where he felt himself drifting back to the island mentally and there was no other way to anchor his mind to his body.

He didn’t have to wait long for that day to occur. The archer had been helping out with some heavy lifting as they set up the annual QC employees’ open-air cinema event that they held in the gardens of the Queen mansion; several of the workers had called in sick due to a nasty stomach bug spreading around so Oliver had volunteered to help, hoping the physical work would allow him to zone out for a few hours. Because the day was unusually intensely hot, halfway through the work Oliver had stripped off his shirt - his family already knew about the scars and the workers there all had their own battle wounds, as the building and decorations company they had contracted for the event mostly hired veterans that were in need of work.

Obviously some paparazzi had managed to sneak their way into the grounds when the gates had been open to let in delivery trucks, or one of the workers had decided they would like to make a little extra cash, because the next day, Oliver’s shirtless, scarred torso was on the cover of every Starling magazine and in some cases, on the news as well. Journalists and reporters talked all about his new set of abs, his tattoos, and theorised how he had got his scars and burns. Oliver felt very small and vulnerable when he read them, because they basically referred to him as a piece of meat up for sale, or as if he was a stud as they wrote about his sex appeal.

Moira and Walter had been absolutely furious and tried to sue the companies and find out who exactly took the photos, but by the time the original images were destroyed, it was too late. Oliver’s half naked torso was splashed over the internet for all to see.

He felt so out of control that he desperately needed to find a way to ground himself. His anchor was slipping, and he found his thoughts straying back to the island, his eyes seeing old memories instead of reality, and he needed that control, he _needed_ to find a way to stop that.

He made his plan. He couldn’t do it in his room, because of the risk of having his family check up on him, he couldn’t do it at the club because of the construction workers and he couldn’t do it in the Lair, because of Diggle. So he slipped Diggle’s watch, turned off his phone and headed to a scummy back alleyway boxing gym in the Glades; it didn’t have CCTV, didn’t ask for a membership and if you paid in cash, they didn’t ask any questions. Oliver wore a dark hoodie and though he was pretty sure one of the owners recognised him, the guy didn’t point attention towards him, which was precisely why he liked coming to these sort of places.

It was nearly empty, with only one guy who looked stoned pounding at a punching bag, so Oliver took a few rounds with his own bag before he grabbed a bucket from the janitor’s closet, filled it with water, found a completely empty area of the gym that people hardly used and thrust his head down into it.

The water was icy and at first the cold was a shock to his body, but as he held his breath and forced himself to stay under, forced himself to keep his head down and his mind to separate from his body, he no longer noticed the freezing cold water. Waller had taught him how to withstand waterboarding and similar forms of torture. He’d learned how to hold his breath underwater for more than four minutes by slowing his heartbeat. This would be a walk in the park. The objective was to make his lungs ache and hurt so much due to oxygen deprivation that he would gain back some control.

He came up gasping and choking out the cold water five minutes later, his lungs burning. But the pain was welcome, because the island seemed so, so far away and that relieved him so much. Shuddering for a minute or two, flexing his aching muscles, he filled the bucket again, dipped his head down into it and waited for the blissful separation of mind from body to occur once again.

He lost count of how many times he repeated this procedure, but after what he thought was about five times, as he ducked his head down into the cold water, he suddenly felt hands yanking his head away from the bucket. The sudden touch made him instinctively inhale, his body requiring the oxygen for sped up respiration for a flight or flight response, and the freezing water rushed into his lungs. For one second, he thought _oh god oh god I’m drowning I’M DROWNING_ and the next second, he was sprawling out onto the padded floor, coughing and spluttering up the liquid from his throat, the water dripping down into his eyes so he couldn’t see.

Then those same hands turned him over so he was kneeling on his hands and knees and violently thumped his back so he retched up the cold water he had accidentally swallowed, before the hands gently pushed him over so he was lying on his side, chest aching as he inhaled deep breaths of oxygen, shivering.

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?!” Laurel’s angry voice screamed at him.

“Laurel?” he wheezed, heaving himself up by his elbows so he was leaning against the wall. “What are you doing here?”

“Apparently saving you from your own _stupidity_ , Oliver!” Laurel shouted, snarling at him, her eyes alight with fury as she violently kicked the bucket to the other side of the room and bore down on him, looking ready to commit murder.

He flinched and she fumed, wheeling away angrily. “Laurel -” he whispered, running a shaking hand through his wet hair. “This isn’t - this isn’t what it looks -”

“Shut up.” She marched out the room only to return seconds later, throwing a dry hoodie at him and spitting, “Put that on, get up. We’re going to my car and then I’m driving you to hospital.”

“I don’t need a -” he began, but Laurel cut him off with a growl.

“I am taking you to hospital, Oliver, because you might have water in your lungs and _everybody_ knows that the water in this area of the Glades isn’t very clean, so you’re at high risk of infection. You might get pneumonia,” Laurel told him angrily. “And with the way you’re shivering, I wouldn’t be surprised if you have hypothermia as well. So _get up_ , and _get in my car_. We _are_ going to hospital.”

Shrugging off his own soaking wet hoodie, Oliver pulled on the dry, warm one with twitching fingers and followed Laurel out of the gym, dragging his feet behind him and keeping his head down. He hugged his arms to his chest to try and contain his tremors as he clambered into the car.

He felt hollow, and empty, as if his emotions weren’t functioning properly. Although Oliver usually felt like this after a self-harm session, it was never this bad. He didn’t feel as if he actually existed. Everything felt far away and distant, and he didn’t feel as if he was sitting in the passenger seat at all. It was his mind playing tricks on him, causing the dissociation, but he had no idea how to stop it. Mentioning it aloud wouldn’t help - Laurel was vibrating with anger beside him, and every single time she reached out to change gear or fiddle with the heater settings, Oliver flinched, expecting violence of some kind. She was so furious that he expected her to want to punish him physically for hurting himself. Back when he had been working for ARGUS, he’d always been hit or kicked for showing self-destructive tendencies, and he didn’t fancy getting slapped, not when he already felt as if he would crack apart at the tiniest little thing.

The two of them remained in stony silence as Laurel turned out of the Glades and only one of the main streets, heading towards Starling General. Laurel didn’t speak, simply glaring at the road and flexing her hands around the steering wheel, and Oliver watched her warily as she cranked up the heating in the vehicle even further, as he was still shivering, not showing any signs of stopping any time soon. It was probably shock that was causing it.

“How do you feel?” Laurel finally broke the silence, the question coming out blunt and emotionless.

“I don’t know,” he murmured in response hesitantly, and flinching when he realised that probably wasn’t the reply that she wanted. He had no idea whether telling the truth or lying in this situation would yield better results.

“Doesn’t matter, I guess,” Laurel said. “They’ll pump you full of drugs at the hospital and you’ll be too doped up to feel any pain then.”

He had to restrain himself from releasing a whimper. Oliver hated hospitals. Had ever since he was a kid, but all the more so now. The doctors were always cold and calculating, not caring very much about their patients’ emotions as long as they kept them alive. Or at least, that had been Oliver’s experiences with hospitals so far. Heading back into that sort of environment when he felt so awful and detached would not be a good thing.

“How did you know where I was?” the archer asked, voice small.

“I got the owner of that gym off death row after he was wrongly accused of murder,” Laurel explained flatly. “He knows we’re friends and he called me because he was worried you’d try and do something idiotic. Which you clearly were.”

“It wasn’t idiotic,” he mumbled, drawing his knees up to his chest to rest his chin on them. “I had it all under control.”

“ _Under control?!_ ” Laurel practically shrieked. “You were _drowning_ yourself, Oliver! That is not under control! That is - that is nowhere _near_ controlled behaviour!”

He didn’t say anything to argue against her. “Please don’t take me to the hospital, Laurel,” Oliver finally said, his voice quiet and breaking on her name.

Laurel dipped her head to her chest, inhaling shakily. She pulled the car up to the nearest curb, off the road, bracing her forearms against the steering wheel and gripping it with her hands tightly. Oliver shifted nervously in his seat, hiding his face into his knees in anticipation of a lecture of some kind.

In a sharp contrast to how she had been addressing him before, she said softly, “I’m not going to ask you to explain _why_ , Ollie. I understand if you’re having difficulties re-adjusting - nobody would blame you, you spent five years away from civilisation being tortured… of course you’re going to struggle in social situations. And with everything that's been going on with the media and those photos circulating, it must be hell for you. I imagined you had PTSD, maybe some anxiety but _this_ …” She turned her body towards him fully and asked, locking her eyes on his and grabbing his hand, squeezing it: “Try and answer me honestly, okay, please? Oliver, do you think you might… be depressed?”

It was extremely hard not to break eye contact. Every one of Oliver’s instinct was telling him to run in response to this confrontation, but when his eyes darted to the car door, he swallowed when he realised Laurel had activated the lock. Looking back towards her again, he answered hoarsely, “Yes.”

Laurel nodded absentmindedly, as if she expected his reply. “Do Moira and Walter know about this?” she questioned quietly.

“About the depression or the self-harm?”

“The… the self-harm.”

His hands were sweaty as he fiddled with them, nodding and mumbling, “Yes… It wasn’t always… that though.”

Laurel visibly swallowed. “What was it before?”

“Some cutting… Mom, Walter and Thea walked in on me doing that. And then Tommy caught me exercising too much and not eating and drinking.” He bit his lip. “The water thing… that was my last resort. I haven’t done it before. Please believe me.”

“I believe you.” She nodded, humming as she watched cars drive past them on the road. “And I presume your family is trying to persuade you to accept professional help?” Laurel asked gently.

“Mom and Walter are,” Oliver replied quietly. “Mom’s trying to arrange for a therapist to drop by weekly for sessions. Thea and Tommy have accepted I don’t want it, but are still telling me it’s a good idea.”

“It is a good idea, Ollie,” Laurel said calmly. “But forcing you to talk to a therapist is not going to help you, and if that’s what Moira and Walter are trying to get you to do, then they’re wrong. It’s wrong for them to force you to do that.” She started the car again and drove back out onto the road, turning around and heading in the opposite direction from the hospital. “I’m not going to take you to the hospital, because you’ve expressed you don’t want to, and I’m not going to force you to.”

“But the water and the infection and the pneumonia…”

“I might have been over exaggerating a little. You drink some Coca Cola to kill the bacteria that could have been in the water, take some Tylenol, and you’ll be okay,” she sighed. “But if you’re refusing to go to hospital, I want you to come around to my apartment and stay the night, okay?”

“Why?” Oliver asked numbly, still looking down at his hands and feeling suddenly confused at why Laurel was being so… _understanding_.

“Because tonight you don’t need a lecture from your family,” Laurel said, in such a soft, tender and sympathetic voice that Oliver actually melted a little inside. “Tonight you need support from your friends. So you, Tommy and I are going to eat ice cream and drink hot cocoa and watch a TV marathon on my couch.”

He didn’t even realise he was crying until he rubbed his face to get rid of his exhaustion and found his eyes were wet. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Don’t thank me, Oliver,” Laurel responded, pulling around a corner onto the main street leading up to her apartment complex. “Just promise me something. Promise me that if you ever feel this way again, if you feel like you need to cut, or drown yourself, or do anything that will result in you in pain and your life possibly in danger, you will stop, and you will take a minute to think about what effect it will have on your family and friends when they find out.”

“I promise,” Oliver murmured, hugging his arms to his chest and shrinking down into the warm hoodie, his tiredness finally taking over.

“Alright.” Laurel parked up and turned the engine off, sitting still for a moment before turning to him. “I’m going to call Tommy and ask him to stop by the store for ice cream before driving over. Do you want to get settled on my couch with a blanket and some hot chocolate? I’ll put a movie on for you while we wait for Tommy.”

He gave a small nod, sniffing, and Laurel led him upstairs and covered him with a thick blanket on her couch, putting on the first Lord of the Rings movie and giving him hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. Tommy arrived within half an hour with four different pints of ice cream and as he handed Oliver his pint of rocky road, he gave him a tight smile.

“Hi,” his best friend greeted him in a quiet voice. “Laurel told me what happened. Are you okay?”

“Better now,” Oliver muttered. “You’re… you’re not mad?”

“Oh, I am. Angry as hell, actually. But Laurel talked me down. Apparently you were having a mental breakdown over it in her car when she was starting to drive you to the hospital.” Tommy slowly sat down beside him, pressing his weight into Oliver’s side. Oliver flinched instinctively, but gradually relaxed and leant into the warmth, resting his shoulder on Tommy’s and allowing his friend to rub the underside of his wrist in a comforting gesture. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“Because you would’ve stopped me.”

An immensely sad look came over Tommy’s face. “And you didn’t want to be stopped.”

He turned away, frustrated with himself. “I don’t know.”

“Oliver.” Tommy gently took hold of his chin and turned the archer’s head towards him, and Oliver winced and lowered his gaze when his eyes clashed with Tommy’s own upset ones. “If you don’t admit it, you’ll never be able to overcome it.”

But admitting it was going to be terrifying, and Oliver didn’t ever want to have to feel that level of fear again. “What if I don’t want to?” he whispered, tears springing into his eyes.

“You don’t want to overcome it?” Laurel murmured, easing into the couch the other side of him and resting her hand on top of Tommy’s on the archer’s wrist. “But don’t you want to stop feeling like this?”

“Yes,” Oliver forced out, voice breaking. “But this - this is the only way I know how to deal with these feelings.”

“Hurting yourself?” When the archer looked away again, Tommy grabbed his hand and yanked him towards him, correcting, “Feeling the pain?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like feeling the pain?” Laurel asked, the half-disguised horror in her voice putting him on edge, making him grit his teeth.

“I can deal with pain,” he mumbled, playing with his hands. He desperately wanted his bow, wanted the fletching of an arrow brushing against his fingers. Archery was safe. Archery was _him_. “This - this pain is nothing. I’ve had a lot worse. But fear, and uncertainty and vulnerability - that’s bad. I c-can’t deal with that. I don’t know how.”

“Will you let us help you?” Laurel murmured, hand drifting over his shoulder to draw circles over his spine. It was a very soothing motion.

“I can try,” he replied honestly. “But sometimes I don’t want to be helped. I don’t deserve to be helped.”

“Everybody deserves to be helped. You more than anybody.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew what I did on the island,” he whispered under his breath, staring at the floor.

“Hey.” Oliver looked up at Laurel and his breath hitched when he saw her determined expression. “We don’t _care_ about what you did on the island. You’re still our friend. We still love you, and we still want to help you.”

“I killed Sara,” Oliver told her bluntly.

She jerked backwards from his touch just like he expected her to, but was surprised when instead of blowing up at him or pulling away with an expression of disdain, Laurel just pulled him into an embrace, which she half shared with Tommy. “You didn’t kill Sara. You were both victims. My sister might be dead, but you’re not. You’re here, and you need my help because you are in a lot of pain right now.”

The conversation ended there, only because Oliver was sniffling too much to continue talking, overwhelmed by the feeling of being cared about and being loved, and not just because of his money or reputation. They didn’t want him because of his fortune, fame or skill set. They wanted him for _him_. The three of them huddled on Laurel’s couch and went through a LOTR marathon. None of them mentioned Oliver’s self-destructive tendencies again whilst watching the movies, just curling up under blankets with their sides all pressed together and Oliver alternating resting his head on Laurel and Tommy’s shoulders. Half way through, Laurel brought him some cola and Tylenol, making sure he downed them before she fixed up some herbal tea to ensure no infection set in because of the Glades water, made of ginger, garlic, honey, sage and aloe. It tasted horrible but was actually quite soothing, and made Oliver slightly drowsy, but he didn't really mind. For once, he felt safe.

“Thank you for tonight,” Oliver whispered, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen at Sam and Frodo trekked up a nameless mountain once again.

“I was serious before, Ollie,” Laurel whispered back, flashing him a quick smile. “You don’t need to thank us. In fact we should be thanking you.” She took his hand and squeezed it. “Thank you for letting us be here for you, Oliver.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Hope you enjoyed. Please leave a comment and kudos.
> 
> Tumblr: @alexiablackbriar13  
> Twitter: @lexiblackbriar


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